How societies commit suicide 'Guns, Germs' author explores why an entire people can hit a dead end

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | Sunday, January 9, 2005 | Troy Jollimore

[nickcarraway]

In "Collapse," the follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning best-seller, "Guns, Germs and Steel," Jared Diamond provides a guided tour of failed human societies that will motivate us, he hopes, not only to try to save our own society from catastrophic collapse but will also provide us with the knowledge and insight to succeed. "The past offers us a rich database from which we can learn, in order that we may keep on succeeding," Diamond writes. Diamond accentuates the positive; his own attitude, he says, is one of cautious optimism. But the book's very title suggests that the enterprise has a depressing and discouraging aspect. For in order to survive, we must learn why so many others have not.

[Enterprise]

A lot of people died in San Francisco because of "dead ends."

[Nick Danger]

25 words or less summary: Unless we buy into heavy government regulation in the name of environmentalism, we're all gonna die.

[Swordmaker]

Hmmmm... what fire-armed society has gone extinct???

[CaptainK]

The third is perhaps the most puzzling; Diamond's explanation returns in large part to his discussion of core values, and his claim that it is often difficult to revise or reject core values (including the materialistic consumerism that is motivating the depletion of our own nonrenewable resources, and the capitalistic individualism that encourages skepticism toward government but not big business), even when their pursuit can be demonstrated to be deeply harmful.

Societies where individuals have been skeptical of capitalism and big business, putting their faith in big government, have been phenomenal successes. Or so I've been told

This chapter ought to be an effective and useful tool for instructors faced with students who share the puzzlement that beset Diamond's own students.

Useful tool = Brainwashing tool

[AZLiberty]

Europe (the non-Muslim segment, at least) is much more at risk than America. A population that can't even reproduce itself is doomed.

[beckaz]

Of course the thing is now a National Geographic many-parts TV thing in PBS.

Saw the Pisarro-Incas episode last night.

Narrative: fascinating.

Analysis: usual crap, cultures are all the same; the Spanish conquered the Incas, and not the other way around, because of "germs".